"I don't want to bother you at work," he said, "but you should know the email you sent me this morning about getting a trainer for your dog was flagged by my ISP as 'Maybe Spam.'"

I flipped open my 'sent mail' folder and reviewed the note I'd written him. Even with all of Sherpa's research on how filters work, there was nothing, nada, zilch, I could see that would make any filter system think my little note was evil.

Over the past few weeks, you may have noticed the same thing happening to much of your sent email, whether it's bulk mail or just individual notes.

Over-zealous filters are stopping a heck of a lot of non-junk mail.

Wen AOL and MSN both announced this week that 80% of the email their users are getting is unwanted junk, it made me wonder what part of that 80% is misidentified good stuff, like my note to Dad.

In the filter world they call it "false positives" and no one admits how many of those they stop from getting to email users.

In reaction to this, I held a Sherpa-wide staff meeting this week to announce a new Company policy: If a communication to anyone is really important, always, always, always follow-up with a phone call. Never assume email got through.

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